1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to memory optimization and improving the efficiency of real memory use by applications and computing platforms such as physical and virtual machines. More specifically, in a system having a plurality of virtual machines, information is periodically collected on memory and CPU usage of each virtual machine and a memory optimizer uses this information to re-allocate memory among the virtual machines, as based on at least one memory optimization mechanism which can reduce memory usage of a virtual machine at a cost of increasing CPU usage.
2. Background of the Invention
It is often important to run multiple virtual machines (VMs) concurrently, particularly in cloud computing environments, where multiple applications can be run concurrently. However, poor memory usage can make a system almost unusable, as, for example, when too much paging between memory and disk can slow the system down.